As of Wednesday I'd officially completed my year as a USM student. Since then has been the mixture of
-relief that work is done
-frustration of packing, sorting things for third year abroad, making sure I'm organised etc
-stress of everything that comes with a year ending, let alone one abroad.

A friend took Anna and I shooting in the woods on Thursday, which was loud and not easy. I tried one shot and it blasted me backwards haha!

A lot of people have left or are leaving tomorrow, I've said many goodbyes in the past few years and I've fallen into the routine of sucking in all the emotion and just hugging someone as if I'll see them in a couple of months. Maybe it's the British in me not wishing to express any sort of feeling. It'll probably hit me at some point and I'll be a watery mess. But I am excited about my last year at Keele! But I have also started having nightmares about waitressing.

Looking forward: I don't return to England for a month and between then and now I am camping in Florida, going to Vegas, Los Angeles then finishing in New York... so a road of adventure.

Looking back: my year spent at Southern Miss has been beyond all my expectations. I've gained so much and changed in so many ways, I can't even begin to explain. In addition to learning a lot about myself and what I've been taught in classes, I've learnt a enormous amount about British culture and what it means to be Southern. Life in Mississippi has been great, interesting, weird... and I've gotten two different perspectives of college living on and off campus. I would strongly recommend studying abroad to anyone, it's the best opportunity I've ever had and something I will remember and talk about forever...

Some pictures of my favourite memories

This week concluded my last ever class at USM which felt pretty emotional plus it's all getting stressful with finals and sorting stuff out so I'm quite exhausted all round.

Since my last update I have
Gone to a 'Crawfish Jam' (or crayfish if you're calling it by its non-southern name). Not as good as a crawfish boil where you pay a selected amount and eat as much as you like, but there was a fun cover band playing.

I went to a car show which was a bit rubbish but American. It was basically just a load of cars parked in a car park with their engines on show. Some were rather nice vintage automobiles, others were regular Honda's with flames painted on them...

 ....speaking of cars, someone entrusted me enough to drive (first time ever) around their car park. I was actually pretty good if I do say so myself.

Anna, Tanja and I went round an American friends house where we played with kittens and ate Southern food- beans, gumbo, cornbread mmmmm

AND

My brother Joe and his gf Anna came visited me yesterday! It was really nice seeing them, I showed them round campus, downtown and Walmart (ha). We went in some strange doll shop that was creepy beyond belief and laughed at the odd . They've spent 2 weeks in the states and spend there last day here. Like me, they're both found people don't understand what they say easily, but then a lot of it is down to using British phrases such as "where abouts is this?"


So this week is my last week as a student at Southern Miss, although I don't have to technically enter a classroom here again (just essays to submit electronically) I've started taking books back (or leaving them in the library if the bookstore won't buy them back... I don't want to throw them out haha) it feels like I've been here for a long time but at the same time, it's gone by very quickly!

I'll probably do a summative post of everything later this week. Beyond the end of the semester and my return to England I have camping, Nevada, L.A and NYC to look forward to :D

Ah the '4 weeks left of the semester' mark has passed, meaning a lot of work combined with the emotion of leaving :'( it's all getting busy and stressful!
I've booked the end part of my post-semester trip- LA and NYC.. I've even got tickets to a screening of Paper Moon presented by its director and Tootsie with Geena Davis introducing it- both shown in old Los Angeles theatres! As a film geek, this is very exciting for me.
But I still need to organize what to do the fortnight before...

So in addition to organising fun times there's been stuff a-happening.

For Easter my room mate Sybs and I donned our Sunday best, went to Church and cooked a Sunday lunch

my melted egg

This week also bought some other niceties- I'm being awarded the 'Ed Wheat American Studies Award'! There's a ceremony tomorrow/Wednesday (for people other than me, it's not that special) which is quite exciting- an award! For me! I've never been awarded anything much before.. except a medal of enthusiasm at a sports camp the parents sent me to one half term.

I rarely touch on the academic side of my year abroad but studying at Southern Miss has been a privilege- there are always interesting lectures available which I regret not having been able to take advantage of due to class clashes or deadlines. In the last weeks there have been a Supreme Judge given a discussion, a renown Psychologist visiting and there was a panel talk on The Help: really awesome opportunities. In my classes I have been fortunate to gain unique perspectives on my subjects. In Politics & Protests we've had people from outside given talks- such as a young women born in America who was moved to a Middle Eastern country and rebelled against the strict, sexist, corrupt rule by holding fashion shows which were deemed illegal (I did pay attention, I'm just being flaky on the details as I don't think I've got authority to publish them here), one of my post-grad classmates also worked for the Bush Administration during his election campaign, she's a noted liberal and involved in the Occupy movement so it's all very interesting and opening my mind- I'm learning a lot about the world. In Vietnam War we've had veterans speak and possibly may visit the nearby Camp Shelby to have an understanding of combat- all fantastic opportunities of education that I would not have necessarily gained in England.

Plus England is so tight with given people recognition- I'd never ever get praise in the form of an award there ;)

I may have only heard of Hattiesburg once I was told I was coming here, and despite the fact it's a small town there's a surprising amount going on.

Last weekend hosted 'HubFest' where stalls were set up selling food, drink and miscellaneous items (including jellyfish in glass paper weights :/ ) and bands played. It was a really lovely sunny day and I had fun.

Eight Things I've Learnt This Week

1. It's common in the south for people to call any soft drink a 'coke'
2. Southerners also have a stronger allegiance to Coca-Cola over Pepsi due to the fact it comes from Georgia (though I imagine if you go to North Carolina this changes)
3. Some swimming pools are salt water. I discovered this one thanks to Sybs splashing water at me whilst I was yapping away.
4. The writer of Eddie Murphy films Coming to America and The Nutty Professor graduated from USM in 1972
5. Cockroaches like hiding in cupboards and surprising European girls unfamiliar with them. Guys are no better at dealing with them then hysterical girls.
6. USM has some really great study abroad programs. I've had two presentations in classes this week and they've managed to make me want to go to countries I've never had interest in haha 
7. The reason American chocolate tastes so different is because it is made to have a higher melting point than European. Sybs and I discovered this through gifts we received (thanks to parents and grandparents)...all her Lindt bunnies look dead, then some investigation via google proved Hershey's is designed to stay solid longer. I'd rather have a wibbly wobbly Cadbury's bar
8. American's, or at least a massive proportion on this campus, love Doctor Who. I'm not sure how they all discovered it but I think I've met more people who really love it here than I have back home. A crazy amount. Some with Doctor Who tattoos...

I've been rather behind on this! Everything got very busy all of a sudden... here is a rundown on different occurrences in my life

St Patricks Day
America with its Irish pride takes this day very seriously. I've never actually ever celebrated it before this year (even though I'm a quarter Irish) but I joined some friends for the occasion, donned some green and drank some beer in a couple of pubs. We also went to the Irish-Italian festival at the St Thomas Aquinas church, which hosted a lot of food stalls, music and fun stuff: it was so busy and had a good atmosphere. It was interesting in that it was attended by hundreds of people not members of the church- in England, it's incredibly unlikely any event would have such high attendees from people who are not members of that doctrine. Some of my friends that I went with who have had a Baptist upbringing thought it was really crazy to have alcohol served at a church event which also made me smile. There's more info on the link above

Assignments Galore
I've had so much work this past week and a half, the end of the semester is really starting to impend with assignments coming at me from every angle.. but I'm really not looking forward to the next 6 weeks passing, even if it does mean I'm free from work. I'm still having the best time here!

Exploring more of Hattiesburg
Even though the town is very small I've still found there's different places to explore. This past week I went to Hattiesburg Zoo, which was actually a pretty cute little zoo. I looked a bit like a plum when I pointed in the water and very excitedly said 'Oh wow! Look turtles!' to which the person I was with replied 'Oh, they're wild... they don't even put them there, they just appear' haha. We also went to T-Bones which is a pretty cool record store cafe, it also hosts comedy nights and gigs.

this monkey looks pretty sad but he did smile at us

Claire turned 21
So we went to some bars and had a party. It turned out to be a French themed party, with Anna and Tanja creating berets out of paper plates, foreign language music and a lot of guys drawing slim mustaches on. Sybs also baked a rather incredible olive and ham bread/cake thing.

Anna being French

Onions et wine

apparently French people don't hug but they aren't all French

So things are well!

Spring Break

A much needed holiday came this week. My brain had given up working a fortnight ago and I got pneumonia so my body was pretty shoddy, a trip away was definitely required!

The French girls (Sybs et Claire), the German girls (Tanja und Anna) and I rented a car and headed to Texas. You see some interesting sites on the road and we passed through a couple of odd small towns. We also encountered a lot of police cars at one point, then discovered later that two convicts had escaped from jail! Ahhh!

Our first stop was in Houston, which turned out to be rather boring! It was raining buckets and everything was closed.. the only people we encountered were homeless or groups of high school girls dressed in sports clothes presumably traveling to play in some tournament. The main problem was finding the epicentre of things and I wondered if the city shut down at the weekend like the financial areas of London do? Either that or it was a city that came alive at night (vampires...?)

one of the very few pictures I took in Houston

We did go to a very large mall in Houston, where we were dry! It was the largest mall in Texas but full of the more up price, high end market shops... my mother will be pleased to find I didn't buy a load of clothes! I did purchase a Lego storm trooper keyring though

 I think it was good that we went to Houston first and I think the weather really effected our opinion of it. I did expect more spaceships...

Then we headed to Corpus Christi, which was BEAUTIFUL! When we arrived we wandered along the harbor outside our motel, then found a restaurant (called the Railway restaurant? I'm not sure) where I ate the most wonderfully fresh shrimp salad. The weather was wonderful

Corpus Christi had a very different atmosphere to the rest of Texas, like most beach towns it's more relaxed and it had many art galleries and museums.

The next day we explored the beaches, firstly the city beach named 'McGee' which was nice but when some clouds came we decided to drive half an hour to Mustang Island and explore the beaches there. We soon found where the stereotypical spring break was happening... you can drive your car (and park it) along the beach (which felt weird) and we drove past many partying youths, wearing neon, blasting RnB from their trucks. It was a very weird, very American site to see and as the majority of them looked under 18, it made us uncomfortable and we drove on, parked and laid in the sun.

parachuters

There were many souvenir shops with a giant shark entrance. I think more shops need giant shark entrances in England

We were going to break our journey up in two on the way home but ended up just driving the full 11 hours, which must have worn Tanja and Claire (our drivers) out but they're troopers!

So this week is turning out to be quite interesting. Saturday night we went to a party where 4 police cars turned up to break before it was even 11pm due to a noise complaint. Cops busting a party is a cliche! It was a pretty calm gathering and considering it was a Saturday night, not actually that late and in a student apartment complex, I was a bit miffed. British culture maybe very reserved and unemotional but greater allowances are made for people having fun.

Sunday, I went to a baseball game. I much prefer fast paced sports to the stop/start routine of American Football and the organ music makes me giggle. Southern Miss won against Troy- I'm not sure who Troy are or where they come from but woohoo! VICTORY!

Monday, I received an email from Keele University warning of toxic bead bracelets made from seeds that have a similar chemical structure to a warfare agent and thought 'cripes!'. Then a couple of hours later I received an email from USM warning of a bank robber roaming on campus... confirming that everything really is always bigger, brighter and more dramatic in the states. It transpired into a bit of a joke with a mock twitter page created, a collection of very precise details about the robber emailed out and I found it hard not to laugh when a policeman came into the library with a piece of paper I can only presume had a description of the criminal, holding it in the air as he looked at people. The man got caught after a 'foot chase'.

Wednesday I went to a basketball game. The stadium was pretty empty as a Greek (sorority/frat, not the nation) event was taking place, but it was a good game and we won again! Apparantly it's the most successful season whilst being in Division 1 that USM has had to date.

So that's my week so far...